The Different Tomatoes

I am growing 4 different kinds of tomatoes in the garden this summer, and its interesting to watch the four different types of plants grow, flower, and start to develop fruit. I know it seems logical, but most of the plants look the same (even when they are different heights) until they start to develop fruit. So, without further ado, here they are.....


This is the Roma. You can see it has a very distinct shape to the tomato. As they are getting bigger they look more the shape of pears then anything else. They seem to push the flower they are sprouting from to the side as they grow, instead of growing out of the middle of the flower.



These are the Juliets. These plants are HUGE. They also seem to be very aggressive both out and up as they are creeping out of their space and into the strawberries and peppers that border them. The seem to grow directly out of the flower as with the Burpee and Heirloom, but they are almost consistently growing 8 tomatoes together at one time. I am seemingly going to have 100lbs of these tomatoes.


These are the big boys, the Burpees. They are just starting to fruit now. These tomatoes are going to be HUGE. Once again I have no reference point to give to you but the tomato on the right which is maybe halfway to being ripe, is larger then any tomato I have gotten rip. I fully expect to get some 2lb tomatoes off of this type of plant.


Some Bell Peppers here. I believe these will eventually be orange.....


The Jalapeños are getting big. This was taken last Wed, and these two peppers are prolly 25% bigger then this.

I am going to get out there and take some pictures tonite for updates, things are getting really interesting.

First Taste of Tomato

That's it. The first harvest of tomato all diced up and ready to be eaten. This was Friday, and the tomato tasted quite good. This is the Czech Heirloom I have been talking about that has a vast amount of tomatoes on it already. I just pulled another one off last night, and I would guess I will have another 5-7 in the coming week. They are not particularly large tomatoes, but they are very juicy, and have a definitive taste to them.

I will update more later this week as the Burpee and Juliet plants are starting to devolop quickly. In the case of the Burpee, you can see how big the fruit is going to be. For the Juliet, its volume, we are going to have a ton of tomatoes!!

Fruits of Thy Labor

Here it is, the very first harvest of the new garden. I mistakenly forgot to put something next to this strawberry for scale, but lets just say that if there was a dime on the table next to this strawberry, it would be bigger : ) However, it did not stop us from each taking a little bite out of it to get a small taste of whats to come. Guess what? It tasted like a strawberry.


A little surprise when I went to the garden last night. There was a pretty sizable bell pepper hiding in the middle of this pepper plant. It seems as thought the bell pepper plants have turned the corner in the last two weeks as things have warmed up. Most of the plants in the main garden have doubled in size in that time. Whats more interesting is finding the way the fruit grows out of the flowers. You can see above that the bell pepper seems to somewhat "absorb" the flower that it grows out of. This is contrasted against the tomato where the flower seems to stay at the bottom of the growing fruit until it dies and falls off......


See that, thats a ripening strawberry without a bit out of it!! That's because of the lovely bird netting that I put over the plants to protect the. You can see the netting in the picture above. This netting is designed to be draped over fruit trees to keep birds from getting to apples, oranges, etc. It is working very well for the strawberries so far. I plan to try and pick this strawberry today or tomorrow.


My sister found this tomato the other day. It was hiding under the mass of tomato plant where this Czech heirloom has intertwined with the Juliet that is right next to it. The original spacing requirements on this were 18" apart; I think I could have put them 36" apart and they would still be growing together. There are three or four tomatoes on the bottom of this plant that are ripening quickly, and I anticipate we will be eating this one by the weekend.


This is just a pretty picture. This is the same Czech Heirloom as pictured above, but I was trying to get some of the "viney-ness" of this plant compared to the very tall Juliet and Burpee plants. This plant seems to be spidering out all over the edge of the garden. I am very glad this was in the corner, or I would be in a lot of trouble with it growing into every other plant I have.

One Week Ago...

This is what the garden looked like when I was out of town last Friday (thanks Mom for taking the photos). As I mentioned before, we received over 4 inches of rain on Friday morning/afternoon. This was the result.....The good news is that we had a decent amount of rain in March before I started to plan the garden, and I had seen the standing water towards the back of the yard. That is why I decided to put the garden where I did, hoping that if we had rain like this, it would survive. The good news is, it did. There are very few lingering issues from all of the water that the was standing around the garden. With the exception of some lower leaves not making it past a coating of dirt (they prolly shoulda come off anyway) everything seems to be fine.


Since we received that rain, we have had very warm weather. We have also had two other instances of short periods of heavy rain, and the water has been absorbing into the ground a little slower. The ground is still VERY wet below the top layer.

One thing is for sure, if I decide to expand the garden towards the back of the property next year, I am going to have to make sure I build the soil up from where its at.

We have some large tomatoes growing in the garden, and a TON of strawberries. I am going to be trying the use of deer netting to keep the squirrels off of them this time. Also, there is finally a bloom on the topsy turvey as well.....

Jalapeño's and More!

Here is the first Jalapeño! The flower that I took a picture of the other week has really started to produce a fairly large fruit. Amazingly, these plants seem to be flourishing with the incredibly wet weather we have been having. As of last night, there are at least two other jalapeño's coming out, and about 10 more flowers right behind that. We are going to be up to our ears in these.



The white grapes are coming along nicely as well. This is a close up, but at a further distance then the previous shots. I would say these are now about half the size of a dime, and seem to be getting bigger everyday. The grape plant has also really taken off now that it has hit the fence. I am going to have to actively trim it to keep it from fully invading my neighbors flowerbed.


Here is a pic of the full garden. Its been a while since I posted one. As you can see, the tomatoes are out of control. I am not going to post this time, but on the left side of this picture is the one bush heirloom tomato plant, and it has at least 15 tomatoes on it, with what has to be 50 or 60 more flowers. This plant is out of control!

You can kind of see the brocolli in the background. It has also gotten crazy and is shooting up like a weed. I think this is a combination of two things. First, with the plants falling over, then being staked and bending and re-bending phototropically to get back to the light, they have ended up growing in a different way then normal. Combine that with the cold/wet weather which brocolli clearly thrives on, and voila, you have out of control brocolli. I took some other pictures that I will post later in the week. This area was also almost under water last week with the storms we had, those pics willl be coming too.


Speaking of standing water and massive amounts of rain. The pic above is of the bottom of the burpee tomato plants. The Chicago area received roughly 4" of rain on Friday (more in some places) and this of course was quite a bit more then the ground could swallow at one time. As a result, much of the bottom leaves of the tomato plants were covered with dirt that was kicked up from the rain, or coated on as the standing water receded. This caused the lower branches leaves to start to die. You can see the yellowing lower leaves above.


Instead of letting the plants continue to put energy into branches that have dead or dying leaves on them, I trimmed them off (thx, Eli). This is very common practice among gardening, and almost overnite those specific plants seemed to perk up a bit (their leaves were drooping). I ended up doing this more on the tomato plants ont he outside, then on the inside plants as they seemed to be affected the most, but I am going to contine to monitor them, and trim where necessary.

Next up are pics of the garden underwater, and the first harvest of the garden!

Updates

I haven't spent a lot of time taking pics in the garden over the last few days as I have been a little obsessed with taking pictures of the flowers in the neighborhood. However, that didnt stop Nora from picking up the hoe and getting to work on some weeding.

Right now the only thing that is really going on is weeding, and attempts at closing up the holes in the fence to try to cut off the rabbit's way into the garden.

As you can see from above, the tomato plants are getting really big. Interestingly, the Juliet tomatoes are the biggest plants right now. While I think in the long term the Burpee's will be the biggest due to the weight of the fruit, right now the Juliet's have really shot up. On that same note, the Juliet's also seem to be flowering as well. I am starting to see some flowers up near the top of most of the 8 plants there. I am curious to see how close to the published growing cycle each of these comes in at.

More details coming later in the week on Jalapeño's and rabbit proofing.

Starting to Come Around Pepper

The pepper plants are finally starting to show some signs of development other then getting big! The above picture is of a Jalapeño plant. As you can see, there is a really nice flower, and above the very beginning of an actual Jalapeño. To give you an idea on size, that small pepper up top is about the size of the top of a ballpoint pen cap. Most of the pepper plants are starting to show these signs.


What I found more interesting, was the distinct differences between the Jalapeño plant and its structure from the other bell pepper plants. I have read in several places that the Jalapeño plant was a much heartier, and strong plant that thrives in warm dry climates. I know this isnt a shock being that much of the Jalapeño's consumed in N. America come from Mexico and the bordering states in the US. However, look at the difference in the woodiness of the stem above compared to the soft green stem of the bell pepper plant below. These two plants are growing 5 feet apart, there is not much difference in soil, and they are getting the same amount of water.


Its very intriguing to me that neither plant seems to be doing better then the other with the cool climates we have had so far this year. Both pepper plants are far more stunted then the Tomato and Broccoli plants are, part of this is their bushiness, and part of this can be attributed to the cool weather. It will be interesting to watch these plants develop if/when summer weather actually arrives.


Here is a strawberry hiding out beneath the cover of some leaves. Do date I have had four strawberries close to ripe (not including this one) and all of them have been "sampled" by the rabbits. This picture was taken two days ago, so there is a good chance that this one is gone as well. I am convinced that there is no chance I will be getting any strawberries from these plants this year.